


Chosen Family

by v1llaneve



Category: Killing Eve (TV 2018)
Genre: Age Play, Age Regression/De-Aging, Bed-Wetting, Breastfeeding, Cuddling & Snuggling, Diapers, F/F, Gentleness, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Non-Sexual Age Play, Sickfic, Soft Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova, Stuffed Toys
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:07:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28999503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v1llaneve/pseuds/v1llaneve
Summary: Eve couldn't understand why Villanelle had put her name down as her next of kin. But she was ready to find out.
Relationships: Eve Polastri/Villanelle | Oksana Astankova
Comments: 13
Kudos: 113





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> After spending months lurking on AO3, I've decided to take the plunge and write something. Inspired by Slow Dances (@X_StarK), A Miracle on 81st Street (@Khamet) and the soft parts of Good Girl (Beautiful_Ruin), Always (@hallowpoints) and Good Girl (@p28) - I'll link them below.
> 
> I'm anticipating future chapters being longer, but I really wanted to get this out.
> 
> This is non-sexual age regression/ageplay. It will get intense. Don't like, don't read.

Eve had just left Bitter Pill when her mobile rang with an unknown number. She was used to these, working as a criminal investigative journalist. Much of her life now involved receiving anonymous tip-offs, often at unsociable hours. Anyone from members of the public to high-ranking politicians had been known to contact her with nuggets of information that might lend themselves to the foundations of a news story. Although she didn’t always agree with spreading sensitive information across a broadsheet, Eve couldn’t deny that people were far more open to talking to a worn-out, middle aged journalist in slacks and a chambray shirt than the Tory arseholes at MI6.

“Eve Polastri” she announced down the phone, as she began to head down the London side-streets towards her flat. Thick, fat flakes had begun to fall from grey skies, and Eve was secretly hoping this wasn’t anything that would get in the way of a potential snow day tomorrow.

“Ms Polastri, my name’s Dr Raja. I’m calling from St Thomas’s hospital.”

“Uh, okay.” Eve began to search her brain for any criminal activity in hospitals they were aware of. She thought she might have heard something about a nurse dealing excess drug supplies, but Eve read so many cases that they often began to blur together.

“I’ve got you down as a next of kin for a Miss Oksana Astankova?”

Eve could have sworn her heart stopped beating.

“Ms Polastri?” Eve realised she hadn’t spoken for some time.

“Uh, yes, sorry, I’m here.”

“As I was saying, Miss Astankova has been assaulted and was brought into A&E a couple of hours ago. She’s going to be staying overnight for observation, but she seems stable at present. She’s asked if you could bring her emergency bag in. She said it’s in her flat at the bottom of her wardrobe. The building code is 7236 and the lady in the flat opposite has a spare key.”

Agreeing with the doctor that she would be there as soon as she could, Eve stood to the side of the path and leant against the wall for a few seconds. There was so much that didn’t make sense. Villanelle - assaulted? She was never reckless, not for a second. She trusted a neighbour with a key? Eve supposed even ruthless assassins had elements of normality woven into the fabrics  
of their turbulent lives. And the question that plagued Eve the most - why had Villanelle put Eve as her emergency contact?

***

Eve had never been inside Villanelle’s flat, but she knew where it was from conversations with Konstantin. Although they had all pretty much gone their separate ways after the night at the bridge, Eve stayed in contact with Konstantin while he recovered from his heart attack, and occasionally brought him stew and dumplings. He’d mentioned where Villanelle was living, and that piece of information had, thankfully, never left Eve’s mind.

Approaching the fancy apartments on the Grosvenor Crescent, Eve pressed the keys to unlock the towering gate, which opened automatically. 27A, Eve was sure that number rang a bell somewhere deep in her subconscious. Finding 27B, she pressed the doorbell and stood awkwardly, feeling vastly out of place in somewhere so upmarket.

“Are you the hairdresser?” answered an elderly woman’s voice.

“Hi, no, I’m a friend of Oksana’s?”

“Who?”

“Oksana? You might know her as Villanelle? The girl who lives opposite you.” There was silence. Shit, thought Eve, as she realised she was giving away all of Villanelle’s disguises. “I’m her next of kin and she’s in hospital. She’s asked me to get some of her things.” 

More silence. Then, the tapping of what Eve hoped was a walking stick, followed by the rattling of a chain. A gap in the door opened to reveal a small, grey-haired lady who had to be at least ninety.

“You’re not going to clear her out, are you?” The woman eyed her sceptically, holding a key.

“Absolutely not. You’ll have this back in two minutes, I promise.”

“Post it through the letterbox when you’re done. But if I find out this isn’t legit...” The woman shook her head and waved her walking stick in Eve’s direction as she walked away and let the door close.

Eve held the key to Villanelle’s flat as though it were about to explode at any given moment, before remembering what she needed to do. She unlocked the Villanelle’s front door, and noticed her perfume hit her stronger than ever. It had been months, but she would never forget the way Villanelle made the entire room smell like power the moment she entered it.

True to the doctor’s word, at the bottom of the wardrobe lay a small, plain black holdall. As she turned to leave, Eve suddenly thought to check the contents of the bag, in case Villanelle had been, well, Villanelle. Putting the bag down on the grey sofa, Eve unzipped the holdall and found, at the top of the pile of other items that had been packed haphazardly, a shotgun.

“For God’s sake, V”, Eve said aloud.

Eve took out the shotgun and stuffed it down the back of the sofa, before quickly rummaging through the rest of her bag to check it for contraband. A few thousand pounds in cash seemed unnecessary, but Eve strongly suspected that this wasn’t just her hospital bag, but one used for fleeing the country at a moment’s notice. 

As she was about to repack the bag, Eve noticed something small and blue sticking out of one of the internal pockets. She couldn’t help reaching her hand into the pocket to discover what was hidden - curiosity was one of Eve’s strongest traits.

Tucked away, underneath hand towels and expensive makeup, was a small, light blue, stuffed elephant.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... I'm honestly blown away with how much love you guys have for the first chapter of this!! As a result, I went into total shutdown and panicked because I feel like I have to write decent shit for these lovely people who have given Chosen Family kudos and I have an inferiority complex.
> 
> This was originally going to be two short chapters but I decided to make them into one long one. My brain is scrambled right now so if there are mistakes I am sorry, I am literally making this up as I go along as I find that's how I write best, so please bear with me.
> 
> And I'm not even sorry that this goes from 0-60 real fast.

“Hi, I’m looking for Oksana Astankova? She was brought in a few hours ago.” A disinterested receptionist barely glanced at Eve as she tapped away at her computer. Without breaking eye contact with the screen, she replied.

“Acute admissions, ward 42, room 12. Two rights and a left.”

Eve didn’t bother to thank her as she swung the holdall over her shoulder and hurried down the sterile corridors. The smell of disinfectant and too-strong coffee grounded her as  
she found a sign pointing to the acute admissions ward, indicating that she was heading in the right direction.

Arriving at the ward, Eve buzzed to be let in, announcing herself over the intercom. She briefly considered that hospitals might be able to overhaul the prison system, such was the difficulty in getting in or out of anywhere.

Eve read the door numbers as she moved down the corridor, standing aside to let an older gentleman attached to a portable IV drip shuffle towards the vending machine. She stopped outside door number 12, took a deep breath, knocked and entered.

“Oh, V.” Eve breathed. Villanelle lay facing away from Eve, but her injuries were still evident. Bandages and wires appeared to conceal her pale skin, and a thin hospital blanket lay over her. Villanelle didn’t look up as Eve closed the door behind her and moved to the chair by the window, where the patient was facing. Villanelle stared into space, unmoving apart from a solitary tear rolling down her cheek. Eve couldn’t prevent her maternal instincts from kicking in as she perched on the bed beside Villanelle and brushed the tear away.

“What happened?” Eve dared to ask. She didn’t think Villanelle would respond, when a small voice whispered.

“They won.”

“Who won?” Eve replied in an equally quiet voice.

“The Twelve. I told them I wanted out. But they won.” More tears began to drip steadily from Villanelle’s bloodshot eyes.

“The Twelve did this to you?” Slowly, Villanelle nodded her head, as Eve exhaled slowly. They sat in silence for a few moments, Eve’s hand absent-mindedly stroking Villanelle’s hair away from her face.

“Oh, I brought your bag. Do you need anything getting out?” Eve said. Villanelle mumbled something into her pillow.

“Hmm?”

“My stuffy.” Villanelle spoke softly. Initially confused, Eve cast her mind to the blue elephant tucked into the corner of Villanelle’s black getaway bag. Unzipping the case, Eve retrieved the stuffed animal, which Villanelle reached out and grabbed instinctively, tucking it under her chin before placing her thumb in her mouth and sucking gently.

Observing the sight before her, Eve recognised that this was not the cold-blooded assassin she knew. This was a child, a pile of broken glass that didn’t know how to put herself back together. But Eve was going to try.

“What hurts?” Eve probed, trying to figure out exactly what had reduced this girl to fragments.

“Everything. They broke two ribs and gave me lots of bruises and I have combustion.”

“Combustion?”

“The head thing.”

“You mean concussion.” chuckled Eve.

“Yeah, that.” 

“It hurts inside too.” Villanelle added quietly.

“What do you mean?”

“It hurts inside my feelings.”

“I think you’ll need to explain a little more than that, won’t you?” Eve spoke to Villanelle as though she was twenty years younger, and took her hand, stroking the back of it with her thumb.

“I don’t want to work for the Twelve anymore. I told them, so they hurt me. If I stay with them, I get hurt on the inside. But if I go, I get hurt on the outside. I feel stuck.” Eve recognised how hard it was for Villanelle to express her emotions, especially when she’d seemingly reverted to this child-like state, and she understood what the girl was implying.

“You think you’re going to get hurt whatever happens.”

Villanelle nodded.

“But you know there’s another option, don’t you?”

Villanelle shook her head slowly.

“We run.”

***

Villanelle had drifted back to sleep. Easing herself off the bed slowly, taking care not to disturb the sleeping blonde, Eve padded out of the room and decided to find them both something to eat. She followed the strong aroma of coffee and eventually located a coffee shop, where she purchased two toasted sandwiches and two lattes. Eve had no idea what coffee Villanelle liked to drink, but she figured a latte would probably be okay. 

As the barista made the coffees, Eve’s mind wandered to the girl lying in the hospital bed with a stuffed elephant. She thought about what she’d previously studied on trauma. Trauma could cause a person to age-regress, but she felt that this was something different, something deeper. It was as though Villanelle’s entire personality had broken down, and she had been replaced with a three-year-old version of herself. Had the nurses picked up on this too, or was it just something she was expressing to Eve?

On her way back, she passed another small shop, and she picked up two fashion magazines to take back to the ward. Eve couldn’t think of anything worse to read, but she thought it might help Villanelle pass the time. As she arrived on the ward, she spotted a nurse sitting at the nurse’s station.

“Hey, um, have you been looking after Oksana Astankova? I’m her next of kin.”

“Sure have,” said the young man with a slight Canadian accent. “What can I help you with?”

“It’s probably nothing,” Eve started. “But she’s sort of, different to when I last saw her. I’ve not actually had any contact with her for over six months, so I’m still trying to figure out why she’s put me as her contact, but she just seems a lot younger. It’s almost like she’s a child.”

“It can happen. Trauma of any kind, medical or psychological, can cause the brain to temporarily shut down. She seems quiet, but she’s also clearly in a lot of pain, even if she isn’t showing it.”

“Right.” replied Eve. “So, it’s temporary?”

“I would think so. But I can get our psychiatrist to come and assess her if you’re worried?”

“No, no, it’s alright.” Eve imagined seeing a psychiatrist would be the last thing on Earth that Villanelle would be comfortable with. “Out of interest, how long is she likely to be in the hospital for?”

“She’s responding really well to the pain medication. If she’ll have someone to stay with her and monitor her condition at home, I can’t see why she shouldn’t be discharged in the morning.”

“Oh, fantastic. Thank you.” Heading towards Villanelle’s room, Eve began to make plans. She knew they couldn’t afford to stay in London for long, but also that Villanelle definitely wouldn’t be up to flying straight away. Perhaps if they stayed in the UK, somewhere remote? Or drove into Europe? Between the pair, they knew enough languages to consider several mainland European countries. Eve knew she wouldn’t catch any sleep until she had a plan for making Villanelle safe. What had drawn her back into the girl’s life so easily she didn’t know, but she was conscious that Villanelle needed her, had chosen her for some reason. And Eve knew that she’d never really let go of the feelings she had towards her - not the romantic ones, but the ones that implored her to protect her with every fibre of her being.

Eve knocked on the door gently before entering, expecting Villanelle to still be asleep. Instead, she found her clutching a pile of bedding and attempting to untangle the IV lines, which were stuck in the bedding and the blonde girl’s hair and hospital gown.

Upon seeing Eve enter the room, Villanelle froze. Her eyes widened and brimmed with tears, her bottom lip trembling. She shuffled on her feet, unsure of her next steps.

“Hey, what’s the matter? I just went to get some coffee. What are you doing out of bed?” Eve questioned, putting the food and magazines on the small bedside table.

“I - ... I - ...” Villanelle tried, but she couldn’t seem to use her words. Eve came over to her, and Villanelle clutched the sheets protectively. It didn’t take much longer for Eve to realise what had happened.

“Have you had an accident?” Eve asked gently. Villanelle didn’t speak, but the way her eyes glazed over as she stared at the floor told Eve everything she needed to know.

“And you wanted to sort it by yourself?” Villanelle nodded slowly.

“Oh, sweetheart. It’s going to be fine, okay? You want me to get a nurse to clean things up?”

Villanelle shook her head, a fat tear escaping from the pools in her eyes and cascading down her pale cheek.

“V, you can’t stay like this all night. We’ve got to get you some clean bedding and get you washed too.”

The blonde girl hated every minute of this. She was tired - so tired - but she did not want anyone to see her like this, she wanted to do it by herself.

“You want me to help you?”

Villanelle slowly nodded, conceding.

Eve reached out to take the damp bedding from Villanelle, who reluctantly handed it over and allowed Eve to place it in the corner of the room by the door. Her room had an en-suite, which she knew was rare in British hospitals, so Eve turned on the taps in the sink and filled it with warm water, taking an expensive looking flannel from Villanelle’s holdall. She didn’t want to risk making Villanelle’s injuries worse by giving her a bath, so a flannel wash would have to do.

“Shall we get you all untangled?” Eve asked, or rather, decided, as she finished filling the sink and returned to Villanelle’s room. Villanelle was mostly expressionless as Eve began to twist the wires and move Villanelle’ limbs around, as though she were a doll. Once the wires were as they should be, Eve wheeled the IV stand into the bathroom, Villanelle following behind.

Villanelle started to shiver - her hospital gown was damp and the drugs made her want to sleep. Usually, she’d have been furious that Eve was seeing her in such a state - unbrushed hair, makeup smeared around her eyes, not to mention what had just happened - but she was too tired to care, emotionally and physically. She stood silently sucking her thumb as Eve began to clean between her legs with a warm, damp cloth. Eve murmured kind words to her, but all Villanelle felt was numbness.

“There, all clean.” said Eve, rinsing the flannel under the hot tap. “Shall we get you back into bed?”

Villanelle allowed herself to be taken by the hand back to her uncomfortable hospital bed. There were no clean covers yet, but Eve gave the girl her coat to act as a blanket. Villanelle automatically put the fluffy hood of Eve’s parka to her cheek and nuzzled into it.

“I got you a latte and a sandwich. Can you eat something for me, please?” Eve began to eat her own sandwich, hoping this would entice Villanelle to eat too. Eventually, Villanelle took half her toasted sandwich and began to pick at it.

“The doctor said you can go home in the morning.” said Eve once she’d finished her sandwich. “We need to get you somewhere safe.”

Villanelle didn’t respond.

“I know London’s probably the worst place to be right now, so I was thinking we should get away. You’re definitely too sick to fly, so how about we drive somewhere? Then you can sleep in the back and focus on getting better.” Villanelle bit her lip and nodded.

“Alright. Let me have a think overnight and we’ll get going in the morning.” Eve started to get ready to leave, as she saw Villanelle’s eyes get heavy.

“Eve?” a small voice said.

“Yeah?”

“Why are you doing this?” Villanelle hadn’t spoken so directly before. It was a glimpse of the woman Eve once knew.

“Because you needed me. You could have asked anyone to come, or no one. But you chose me, and I’m going to help you get out, V. I want to help you get out.” A small smile crossed Villanelle’s lips.

She didn’t know why, but Eve felt it entirely appropriate to plant a kiss on the crown of Villanelle’s head before leaving. Villanelle wriggled appreciatively, and mumbled “Night, Eve.”

“Get some rest, okay? I’ll see you in the morning.”

And Eve began her journey home to her studio flat, freezing without a coat in the snowy weather, but distracted by adrenaline. She had a long night of planning ahead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PS - I already know where Eve's taking V and I am SO excited. I'm working this week so it might take a while to update. I'll do my best. Thank you for the love💗

**Author's Note:**

> please satisfy my praise kink and give this some kudos if you like it, idk, if you like.
> 
> Slow Dances - https://archiveofourown.org/works/26633125/chapters/64944478
> 
> A Miracle on 81st Street - https://archiveofourown.org/works/27455350/chapters/67121407
> 
> Good Girl - https://archiveofourown.org/works/25143001/chapters/60921400
> 
> Always - https://archiveofourown.org/works/24779332/chapters/59919160
> 
> Good Girl - https://archiveofourown.org/works/24711544


End file.
